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Climate key to Sphinx's riddle JEREMY WATSON GLOBAL warming is one of the greatest threats to present day civilisation but work by a team of Scots scientists suggests the ancient Egyptians may have been earlier victims of climate change. The pharaohs ruled their empire for hundreds of years, spreading culture, architecture and the arts before it collapsed into economic ruin. Why that happened is one of the great mysteries of history. Now a team of scientists from Scotland and Wales believe the answer lies beneath the waters of Lake Tana, high in the Ethiopian Highlands, and the source of the...

The Great Sphinx of Giza might have originally had the face of a lion and could be much older than previously thought, archaeologists have claimed. Until now its origins have been one of history's most enigmatic mysteries, but a new study suggests that the icon did not have the face of a pharaoh. The Sphinx is a statue of a reclining lion with a human head, which stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, near Cairo. It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 241 feet long, 20 feet wide and 65...

According to Robert Temple, a moat theory explains the water weathering of the Sphinx without hypothesizing that it dates back to an earlier period of more rainfall than the present. I will not address his other hypotheses, which I do not find persuasive, that the Sphinx was the jackal [wild dog] Anubis and the face seen on the Sphinx is that of the Middle Kingdom pharaoh Amenemhet II, though I note the original Sphinx has been reworked and the head re-carved... Assuming the argument that the Sphinx sat in a pool, either the water level around the Sphinx was the...

The POV Channel's video titled "I Found a Weird Thing on Google Earth" documents their journey to a remote canyon where they discovered two rock formations that resemble breasts. The video shows the narrator and his friend hiking and exploring the area around the rock formations, which they affectionately refer to as "rock boobs." They marvel at the natural beauty of the canyon and the unique formations they find, including a cone-shaped rock and a spiral canyon. The narrator is impressed by the lifelike shape of the rock boobs and describes them as "surprisingly realistic." Despite the rain and the...

The arrival of more than 160,000 border crossers and illegal aliens is spurring “the erosion of the quality of life” for New Yorkers, Mayor Eric Adams (D) says. During a press conference alongside Chicago, Illinois, Mayor Brandon Johnson (D) and Denver, Colorado, Mayor Mike Johnston (D), Adams warned again that New York City is falling into disarray as a result of illegal immigration.

Sen. Chuck Schumer warned that parts of Long Island’s prized beaches and nature reserves have been literally washing away and the Biden Administration has done nothing to replenish the beaches and stem the erosion. Schumer, the Senate Democratic majority leader from New York, blasted the Army Corps of Engineers for their inaction in failing to restore large chunks of Fire Island’s pristine beaches, which were decimated by a slew of winter storms. Fire Island helps shield Long Island from violent storms fueled by the Atlantic Ocean, while its status as a favorite summer getaway for city dwellers provides crucial jobs...

Erosion along Daytona Beach, Florida, caused mainly by two hurricanes last fall, exposed a shipwreck last week that archeologists hope to learn more about, according to reports. FOX 35 in Orlando reported that researchers planned to examine the wreckage Monday, though it is not clear whether inclement weather deterred those plans. The wreck was exposed near Daytona Beach Shores because of beach erosion allegedly caused by hurricanes Ian and Nicole in 2022 and high tides. Aerial footage captured by the station’s SkyFox drone depicts wreckage in the shape of a hull, estimated to be 25 to 30 feet long. FOX...

DAYTONA BEACH SHORES, Fla. — Severe beach erosion from two late-season hurricanes has helped uncover what appears to be a wooden ship dating from the 1800s which had been buried under the sand on Florida’s East Coast for up to two centuries, impervious to cars that drove daily on the beach or sand castles built by generations of tourists. Beachgoers and lifeguards discovered the wooden structure, between 80 feet to 100 feet, poking out of the sand over Thanksgiving weekend in front of homes that collapsed into rubble on Daytona Beach Shores last month from Hurricane Nicole. “Whenever you find...

Coastal erosion is threatening beachfront homes and a popular railroad route in San Clemente, California. The Pacific Ocean’s powerful swells have reclaimed much of the Cyprus Shore community’s beachfront, which includes the passing of Amtrak’s Pacific Surfliner. The rail line offers uninterrupted picturesque views of the Southern California coastline to more than 8 million passengers each year, AFP reported. A portion of the tracks was closed for emergency repairs on Sept. 30, and at least two homes have been deemed uninhabitable due to the encroaching sea water. San Clemente resident Steve Lang told AFP that his neighbors feel they can't...

Today marks the 230th Anniversary of the passing of the Bill of Rights, Dec 15, 1791. The founding fathers originally intended the Bill of Rights to be an additional shield against federal tyranny, reinforcing the clear limits that the Constitution already had put in place. Like Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings, who proclaims to the ancient demon, "You Shall Not Pass," the Bill of Rights was to be an instrument that States and individuals would use to proclaim the same message to the national government. Continued in comment:

In 1999, radiologist Nicola Strickland went on a holiday to the Caribbean island of Tobago, a tropical paradise complete with idyllic, deserted beaches. On her first morning there, she went foraging for shells and corals in the white sand, but the holiday quickly took a turn for the worse. Scattered amongst the coconuts and mangoes on the beach, Strickland and her friend found some sweet-smelling green fruit that looked much like small crabapples. Both foolishly decided to take a bite. Within moments the pleasantly sweet flavor was overwhelmed by a peppery, burning feeling and an excruciating tightness in the throat...

The Trump administration has ended five cultural-exchange programs with China that it says were being used for the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda and had no benefit to the United States. The terminations follow new visa restrictions announced by Washington limiting stays in the U.S. by members of the CCP and signal further erosion in relations with Beijing. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the exchange programs he ended were fully paid for and operated by the Chinese regime “as soft power propaganda tools.” They provided “carefully curated access to Chinese Communist Party officials, not to the Chinese people,...

National Guard helicopters dropped thousands of used Christmas trees into Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge marshlands in New Orleans East this week. It's part of a decades-long restoration effort. "For us, it was Christmas in March," Shelley Stiaes said. She's the manager of the 25,000-acre refuge, and has worked there 19 years.Nearly 5,000 trees collected in New Orleans after Christmas were airlifted to select spots in wetlands and ponds. The trees act as a breakwater, protecting the city from storm surges and erosion, while also providing habitat for fish and other wildlife. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says Bayou...

Despite the obvious similarities between Martian and Terrestrial dunes, one in-depth analysis has led a couple of researchers (Gary Kocurek and Ryan Ewing, see below) to suggest that there are also important differences.

Camel Rock is a landmark along the interstate betwSanta Fe and Espanola. It's a pile of rocks that look like a camel sitting down. Locals love it, and tourists flock to it. But Camel Rock now looks a little bit different. It's hard to tell from a distance but up close, it's easy notice a huge chunk of rock that created the camel’s mouth is now gone. When compared side by side, it’s easy to see. “I feel sad. I feel sad,” said Vincent Lopez, who lives nearby in Nambe. “It's Camel Rock. I mean, you could compare it to...

Rapid Erosion Supports Creation Model by Frank Sherwin, M.A. | Jan. 25, 2016 Recently in Dorset, England, bad weather washed a massive section of a cliff into the sea revealing scores of ammonite fossils.1,2 Creation scientists are interested in this cliff fall because substantial erosion was accomplished in literally seconds. It didn't take hundreds of thousands to millions of years of slow and gradual erosion. The cliff fall at Dorset isn't the only recent example of rapid and significant erosion. Uniformitarian geologists claim the famous White Cliffs of Dover, composed of calcium carbonate, were formed in the Cretaceous Period between...

Skeletons of second world war soldiers are being washed from their graves by the rising Pacific Ocean as global warming leads to inundation of islands that saw some of the fiercest fighting of the conflict. On the day Europe commemorated the 70th anniversary of the storming of Normandy beaches in the D-Day landings, a minister from the Marshall Islands, a remote archipelago between Hawaii and the Philippines, told how the remains of 26, probably Japanese soldiers, had been recovered so far on the isle of Santo. "There are coffins and dead people being washed away from graves; it's that serious,"...

Cavitation by John D. Morris, Ph.D. "One glance at Grand Canyon evokes wonder at the extensive erosion that occurred—but the canyon is only the final whisper of a grand-scale event. The massive erosion episode leveled off and gouged out the Colorado Plateau, covering much of Arizona, Utah, New Mexico, and Colorado. The present-day Colorado River hardly seems capable. Something of a much larger scale accomplished this!...." more...

Much has been made of the precipitous decline in the level of discourse in the United States. Many attribute this to the coarsening of the language and the ever-widening gulf between the various factions in the political spectrum. However, these factors are a symptom of a current underlying and foundational dilemma: the inability of not only the general public, but nearly all of the so-called societal leaders and opinion-makers to generate an original thought, as well as a stubborn refusal to use reason and logic when confronted with irrefutable facts and arguments. These traits can be explained, insofar as the...

Beach in Portugal Click to see the original 10x larger.